Qualla: Borneo Orangutan Survival

Borneo Orangutan Survival: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrea.knox, CC BY-SA 4.0. The baby orangutan arrives clinging to a blanket as though it were its mother. It is usually weeks old, often dehydrated, almost always traumatized. Someone kept it as a pet, or found it after loggers cleared the forest where its mother lived, or confiscated it from a wildlife trafficker at a roadside stall. At the Nyaru Menteng rehabilitation centre in Central Kalimantan, a surrogate human mother will carry this infant through its first months, then slowly, over years, teach it everything a wild orangutan mother would have -- how to climb, how to forage, how to build a sleeping nest in the canopy each night. The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation has been doing this since 1991, and the scale of the operation says everything about how badly Borneo's forests have been broken.

Image: Andrea.knox | CC BY-SA 4.0

Borneo Orangutan Survival: Schoolchildren and a Dutch Ecologist

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrea.knox, CC BY-SA 4.0. BOS began not as a grand conservation initiative but as a local response to a visible crisis. In 1991, ecologist Willie Smits, teacher Peter Karsono, and a handful of colleagues in Balikpapan -- supported by schoolchildren who raised funds -- founded the Balikpapan Orangutan Soci...

Image: Andrea.knox | CC BY-SA 4.0

Borneo Orangutan Survival: Forest School

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrea.knox, CC BY-SA 4.0. Nyaru Menteng, founded in 1998 by Danish conservationist Lone Droscher Nielsen with backing from the Gibbon Foundation and BOS, became the operation's emotional and logistical center. Located 28 kilometers from Palangkaraya, it was designed for 100 orangutans but at its peak hous...

Image: Andrea.knox | CC BY-SA 4.0

Borneo Orangutan Survival: A Population in Freefall

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrea.knox, CC BY-SA 4.0. The urgency behind BOS's work is mathematical. The Bornean orangutan was uplisted to Critically Endangered in 2016 on the IUCN Red List. The population has collapsed to less than 20 percent of what it was in 1973, when an estimated 288,500 individuals lived on the island. Defores...

Image: Andrea.knox | CC BY-SA 4.0

Borneo Orangutan Survival: Kehje Sewen: A Forest Renamed

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrea.knox, CC BY-SA 4.0. In July 2010, at an international conservation meeting in Bali, the Indonesian government granted BOS a permit to manage 86,594 hectares of former logging concession in East Kutai for orangutan reintroduction. The foundation named the site Kehje Sewen -- "home for orangutans" in ...

Image: Andrea.knox | CC BY-SA 4.0

Borneo Orangutan Survival: Cameras in the Canopy

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrea.knox, CC BY-SA 4.0. BOS's work has become unexpectedly famous. The BBC's Orangutan Diary, NHNZ's Orangutan Island series, and most recently Orangutan Jungle School -- airing on networks from the Smithsonian Channel to Sky Nature -- have brought millions of viewers into the nurseries and forest schoo...

Image: Andrea.knox | CC BY-SA 4.0